As "parking guru," UCLA's Donald Shoup is credited with influencing how cities shape their parking policies to improve mobility and neighborhoods. But today in the LA Times, he goes after a different angle in parking: tickets. more ›

Santa Monica earns $13 million a year in parking ticket fines and a good chunk of that comes from those who forget to move their car on street sweeping days. With two days, as in two sides of the street, to keep tabs on, that's 104 chances to screw up. Now, in NoMa (you know, North of Montana), two friends have paired up on a business venture to become ticket angels, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press. more ›

In KNBC's latest investigative report by Joel Grover and Matt Goldberg, it seems there was some stonewalling by parking officials, they claim. Working on a report about the city possibly reaping millions of dollars a year on bogus parking tickets, the city refused to speak to reporters about the issue. more ›

Hell hath no fury like a reporter scorned! Police in Santa Monica may be admitting to erroneous parking tickets issued to residents last week, but they are making no apologies for writing $200 worth of tickets to KTLA during a live broadcast yesterday morning. more ›

The L.A. City Council yesterday voted to increase parking fines by $5. While that won't take effect until the full budget is approved and then some 30 to 45 days after that, it would make Los Angeles the priciest place in the region to receive a parking ticket. Here are a few violations and what they will cost if everything goes to the city's plan: more ›

The price of a parking ticket citations increased a couple years ago. Then Mayor Antonio Villariagosa proposed raising fines by $3 in his most recent budget proposal. And today, Councilmember Tony Cardenas requested the Mayor's proposal be upped to $5. more ›

In last week's post about a parking enforcement officer taking lunch while his vehicle sat partly in a red zone, one LAist reader asked for the final word on red zones. "Does the red zone go by the frame of the car, or the tire?" asked a commenter named "Los Angeles." Commenter "Defender90CA" replied "Red zone goes by the tire, not the frame." more ›

Current law: don't pay five parking tickets, you get booted and/or towed. Possible future law? Don't pay three or four parking tickets, you get booted and/or towed. The latter is the dream of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, according to a 2009-10 State Legislative Program packet submitted to a City Council committee for consideration later this afternoon. more ›

A Tuesday night CBS 2 News report that featured LAist (they described as "a Web site where people vent about issues like parking tickets," and pronounced us as LA-List, hehe) exposed the hundreds of thousands of tickets that drivers have fought and won. In total, over a two and a half year period, they found that more than 124,000 tickets were overturned. more ›

One LAist reader has a travel warning for you that could put a frown on your face once you return from the Thanksgiving holiday (or any trip from that matter). Here's what they had to say: more ›

It's a rather dubious honor: The first taco truck to be cited for violating the County's new mobile food vendors' parking laws. more ›

Getting a parking ticket just downright blows, agreed? It can be the ultimate day-ruining moment, especially if you're having the proverbial "one of those days" to begin with. more ›

/> *Update: Read the developments from the next day. I don't think I'm a bad person. I'm nice to strangers. I gave my belt to a homeless man a few weeks ago. And I drive my car as little as possible so as not to pollute the environment or exacerbate our dangerous oil dependency. I bike everywhere. In fact, I frequently go a week or more without using my car at all. So why am... more ›

Dear Mr. Bay, I have been waiting for a kick-ass Transformers movie to come out since I was a little kid. I love the Autobots. At one point, I even had plans to marry Optimus Prime, except that he died during one of the Transformers episodes before I had the chance to tell him of my love. When I turned five, I had a Transformers birthday cake. Sometimes I would pretend that my Malibu... more ›

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week. more ›

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Here at LAist, we are all for government contracts. After all, It makes fiscal sense, especially with the ominous budget cuts on their way next week. From medical benefits to office supplies, vendors save the tax dollars. Period. more ›

A friend of ours got a parking ticket for parking in front of a fire hydrant. Okay, yeah, duh. Let us back up here. There were two hydrants within about 50-feet of each other. One, looking fairly new with a brightly painted red curb. The second, the one he got ticketed for parking in front of, had no red curb (not even slightly faded) and looked like a hydrant that died in 1981. We... more ›

Once upon a time, a Parking Enforcement Officer was writing a ticket in the far off land of The Valley. Walking back to his car, the owner witnessed the small financial stress he was about to endure. Instead of trite and jejune expletive name-calling, he chose, "you are the spawn of the Devil." more ›

Meet Nick Vautier. He's the man behind 100parkingtickets.com. Nick's initials happen to be the same as the abbreviation for "not visible," which happens to be commonly used when Parking Officers cannot see the license plate or it's missing. Too bad for Nick, who scored the license plate, NV, got a delinquency notice everytime it was written on a ticket that went unpaid: more ›

Join activists, journalists, attorneys and public officials to discuss the new government transparency initiative approved by California voters in the November 2004 elections. more ›

Let's face it -- LAist knows that getting your caffiene-buzz on a Monday morning is tough enough simply because it's a Monday morning. But having to decide where to go, if there's enough parking, how quickly you can do it and which route to take are all legitimate and complicated decisions. But when competition becomes so crazy that the same unnamed beanery puts one of their stores directly across the street from another one of their stores...well, it's time for a bean-battle the likes of which no mere mortal has ever seen. more ›

We promise that not every installment of the A&E Report will focus on parking, but there's a reason the first two installments do: parking in this city — big time. It's a curse that affects us all, and most of us just suck it up and suffer through it. But the arrogant and entitled don't play by the rules, and they've made parking more of a nightmare than it needs to be. more ›